


Sylvester: Afterwards

by koalathebear



Category: Sylvester or the Wicked Uncle - Georgette Heyer
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-28
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-04-23 19:10:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4888642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/koalathebear/pseuds/koalathebear
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a few bits and pieces from me on what things might have looked like 'afterwards'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Tell her that you left me on the point of writing to Lord Marlow, to request his permission to marry his daughter, and fear nothing! She’ll fall on your neck!"

"I say, that’s a dashed good notion!" exclaimed Tom, his brow clearing. "I think, if you’ve no objection, I will tell her that!"

"Do!" said Sylvester cordially, and went back into the library, to find himself being balefully regarded by his love.

"Of all the arrogant things I’ve heard you say—"

"My lord Duke!" interpolated Sylvester.

"—that remark was the most insufferable!" declared Phoebe. "What makes you so sure Grandmama will be pleased, pray?"

"Well, what else am I to think, when it was she who proposed the match to me?" he countered, his eyes full of laughter.

"Grandmama?"

"You absurd infant, who do you suppose sent me down to Austerby?"

"You mean to tell me you came at Grandmama’s bidding?"

"Yes, but with the utmost reluctance!" he pleaded outrageously.

"Oh—! Then—then when you sent me to her—Sylvester, you are atrocious!"

"No, no!" he said hastily, taking her in his arms again. He then, with great presence of mind, put a stop to any further recriminations by kissing her; and his indignant betrothed, apparently feeling that he was too deeply sunk in depravity to be reclaimable, abandoned (for the time being, at all events) any further attempt to bring him to a sense of his iniquity.

*

During the drive back to Green Street, they sat very, very close to one another in the carriage, Phoebe's head resting on Sylvester's shoulder, her hat discarded on the seat on the other side of the carriage as they held hands.

"Can it be that you _really_ wish to be wed?" she asked him wonderingly.

"How can there be any doubt?" he demanded, torn between amusement and exasperation. "I will only permit you to cry off, Sparrow if you can look me in the eye and tell me that you do not return my sentiments."

"That I cannot do," she admitted frankly. "For while it is such a lowering thing to admit, I confess I must have loved you for a some time now …"

"Lowering?" he mocked her and she smiled up at him in a way that made him forgive Phoebe her blunt words and kiss her instead.  
Her fingertips went up to touch his face wonderingly, lingering for a moment on his face, usually stern but now soft with love and tenderness.

He helped her to spring down from the carriage even as she would have leapt down lightly herself. When the front door opened, a grim-faced Horwich regarded them narrowly, staring at their flushed faces and their clasped hands in astonishment.

"Please let Lady Ingham know that I have come to speak with her," Sylvester told Horwich in his coldest and haughtiest of tones.

"This is your last opportunity to change your mind, my lord Duke," she teased him incorrigibly and he laughed. "Not a chance, my love," he told her and they strode into the house determinedly.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cold feet from Phoebe

"What's troubling you, Sparrow?" Sylvester asked of his affianced quizzically, staring down into her chalk-white face.

"I'm really not sure I can do this," she whispered, hands trembling as she smoothed over the costly silk of her high waisted ball gown.

His brows pulled together sharply. "Who has unsettled my future Duchess?" he demanded sternly of his betrothed.

"Me," she told him frankly, pulling at a carefully pinned curl such that it tumbled down about her shoulders and then sprang out to one side in a lopsided fashion that made him smile. She was dressed simply and elegantly in a deep blue gown. She'd never be a beauty but there was something about the speaking liveliness of her eyes, the crooked rueful tilt of her smile and the laughter that quivered in her voice that completely undid him.

"Can you really picture me as a duchess, Sylvester?" she asked him simply, gesturing at herself, awkward and ordinary.

"You are the only woman I can imagine in that position," he told her coolly.

"And you know that as I go out there, everyone will be staring .. wondering … gossiping. I've heard the whispers – that I must have entrapped you somehow … that could do so much better for yourself."

His brows lifted and his voice was cold and quelling. "I have heard no such talk and nor would any dare to voice such things in my presence."

"But I have heard them," she told him ruefully and there was a pang as he stared at the wounded look in her eyes. 

"And if you were to marry any of those that whispered such things, then you'd have cause to be sorrowful but … my dearest Phoebe, you are to wed _me_." 

He extended a hand and took her small, gloved one in his, drawing her to her feet easily. "Do you think that the majority of the _ton_ would give me the time of day were it not for my fortune and my position in society?" he asked her crookedly.

"I am told that you are considered tolerably handsome, Duke," she remarked as she walked with him down the hallway.

He felt her trembling at his side and looked down at her. "What would Matilda do?" he teased her.

"Probably something excessively foolish," she replied truthfully, a rueful smile twisting her mouth. He lowered his head and their lips met lingeringly and the sweet and sharp desire that twisted through her made her momentarily forget her doubts and anxieties. As the door was flung open, his mouth was still inches from hers and there was a gasp from the assembled guests as it was abundantly clear that his Duke of Salford had been engaging in vulgar displays of public affection.

A flush reddened Phoebe's cheeks but she still tingled from Sylvester's kiss and she could still taste him on her lips and the recollection gave her much courage.

*

Much, much later in the evening Sylvester begged a dance of his betrothed whose dance card had been full the entire evening. "It must surely be my turn for a dance, love," he reminded her and before the horrified gaze of Lady Ingham but the amused stare of the Duchess, he proceeded to dance with his affianced out of the ballroom and onto the balcony away from the avidly curious eyes of the guests.

"He does love her," Lady Ingham conceded reluctantly.

"More than life itself," the Duchess murmured, smiling warmly. "It's what I always hoped for him … "


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Heyer referred to the fact that Phoebe was brutalised by her stepmother but we never really explored that part of her history ...

Phoebe's face was buried face down in the pillow and she became aware that her body ached – but deliciously so. Her lips were swollen, there was a distinct ache between her thighs and she blushed fierily as she recollected the activities of their wedding night. 

Prior to the evening, Phoebe had had a fairly reasonable practical understanding of what might take place. The reality was much, much more pleasurable – and delightful for Sylvester had been a mix of tenderness and flattering impatience … It had been quite illuminating to see her husband lose himself in the throes of passion – control gone, his soul laid bare to her.

She stiffened though when she felt fingertips smoothing across the skin of her bare back. Glancing up she looked into her new husband's face. He was propped up onto one elbow and while his fingers were gentle against her skin, his eyes were black with anger and his face fierce with emotion.

"Who has marked you thus, Phoebe?" he demanded harshly. His intention had been to press a kiss to his young bride's bare shoulder as she lay sleeping but then the morning light had revealed pale scars across her back.

Phoebe sighed. "Her ladyship was always trying to purge of me of what she called my hoydenish tricks …" she told him sadly. "Wanted me to be a proper lady."

Sylvester looked aghast. "Lady Marlow _whipped_ you?" he demanded in horror. 

Phoebe nodded. "Many a time … whippings … many of my hours were spent in solitary confinement. She had no love for me and I for her."

"That is no justification for her to have whipped you," he muttered, his voice thick with anger and sympathy. She would bear these scars for the rest of her life and his imagination was too quick to picture the thin, young Phoebe sobbing and trembling beneath a whip administered by her cruel stepmother.

Phoebe shrugged. "She did not break my spirit, although she tried. I still went about my ways," she told him.

"And your father did nothing?"

"He left the raising of children to her ladyship," Phoebe told him quietly, thinking of the times her father had left the room swiftly, unable to meet her gaze.

She flushed when her husband lowered his dark head to trail his lips across the raised flesh of her scars. "She shall never hurt you again," he promised her and he drew her body back against him, his clever hands travelling where they would.

Phoebe's eyes widened. "We can do this in the daylight hours, Sylvester?" she wondered and he gave a low laugh.

"We can do this any time we like, love – and we shall," he promised her and she forgot everything except for Sylvester and the delight he brought her…


	4. Chapter 4

Phoebe stirred slightly in her sleep and curled up against Sylvester's side. It was morning and yet again he lay in his wife's bedchamber instead of in his own. 

Convention dictated that he should return to his own bedchamber in the night and yet three weeks after their wedding, here he was allowing the morning sunlight to find him still lying beside Phoebe in her bed. His own bed had suddenly become very large and unwelcoming.

"Do you mind me sleeping here?" he asked her suddenly and she blinked at him sleepily and smiled.

"Of course not," she replied. Then her eyes clouded over. "Is that very unfashionable of me?"

"Terribly middle class of us both," he teased her. 

"Whatever will the servants say?" she responded, laughter dancing in her eyes.

"That the Duke and Duchess and of Salford share a bedchamber … "

"How frightfully scandalous," she gasped, feigning horror.

"It's one of the signs of the apocalypse, I'm sure," he assured her, even as he reached out to draw her against him. "I find myself not wanting to leave."

"I've never been one for fashion, myself," she remarked. 

As their laughter filled the room, nothing could have been further from their minds than the end of the world.


End file.
